Poly Fossil

As kids grow up, toys they once treasured and played with becomes abandoned and obsolete. Sometimes with broken parts, scratches and fading colours, these toys get thrown out and most end up in landfill. I disassembled "HELI", a plastic toy my son used to adore when he was about two years old. Embedded in resin and sanded back, the tile reveals abstract forms of the plastic casings and parts of the original toy. Instead of ending up in landfill, it will now be made into a brooch for me to wear and treasure.

Terra Rings

Processed materials should not be divorced from its vibrant origins. The series of rings create sensory links between the raw forms of materials and their manufactured products. The latter are ready in the form of refined metals, paints, resins, concrete and dyes typical to our practice. Obtaining and using their precursor- ores, rocky minerals, fossil fuels of various types, all of which have plant and animal origins- require a little more effort. We take advantage of small scientific samples, shipped to us from around the world, thanks to fossil fuel. Collaboration with @guykeulemans.

Elizabeth's Knitting Needle Bracelet

Elizabeth was given the set of needles by her late grandmother when she was about 6 years old. Her grandmother was an avid knitter, and she taught Elizabeth how to knit. She used them off and on for 35 years until one day, she accidently snapped one of the needles. Losing their functionality, she initially threw them out, but quickly retrieved them. The needles represented something very precious to Elizabeth, it was a link to her dear grandmother. A collaboration with Guy Keulemans, we sliced the broken needles into tiny segments and encasing them inside a clear resin bangle. Now Elizabeth has a wearable bracelet, and its little slices speak of the repetition of knitting patterns, and the progression of life, year by year

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Object Therapy is a research and design project created to help us rethink our consumption patterns and reevaluate the broken objects that surround us. Developed in collaboration with Dr. Guy Keulemans of the University of New South Wales (UNSW) and Niklavs Rubenis of the Australian National University (ANU); the project is an investigation into the culture of ‘transformative’ repair as practiced by local, interstate and international artists and designers.

Often repaired objects are perceived as being of less value. Object Therapy seeks to challenge this preconception, celebrating repair as a creative process that can add value.

The exhibition features 30 broken or damaged objects (including one human!) that have undergone therapy – treated and ‘creatively’ repaired by a designer or artist.

The broken objects were collected via a call for entries that was open to anyone who had a broken or damaged piece that needed fixing. Participants dropped their objects off at Hotel Hotel and were video interviewed by a design researcher to better understand their relationship with the object and their perceptions of waste and repair. They were then asked to ‘let go’ of the item so that it could undergo ‘therapy’. Objects were then handed over to a designer or artist to repair. The design brief was loose – the appearance and also possibly the function of the object may have been totally transformed as a part of the repair process.

Designers and artists had six weeks to repair the object. At the point of being reunited with the object the owners were video interviewed again.

The Object Therapy exhibition includes the objects along with excerpts of the video interviews to form a practical study of repair and its possibilities – building a new body of knowledge around repair and the design process, and objects and their meaning.

Gold Ring

A contemporary spin on the classic engagement rings. While the idea of using ethically sourced stone is becoming increasingly important to many consumers, the term "ethically mined" is a grey area as it is extremely difficult to fully trace the origin of gemstones. Many mines operate illegally, cutting down rain forests and miners work under apparlling conditions.

I have fabricated and set "stones" out of 9, 14 and 18 carat gold, sourced from 99% recycled gold.

Finger Sculpture

A collection of rings in sterling silver and powder coated brass set with various shapes in resin. These objects are derived from the Terra Rings collection, that further seeks to investigate the use of unusual materials and forms to be worn on the hand.

Endcap Project

These are industrially mass-produced raw brass endcaps. It is most commonly used to ‘cap’ loose ends of ropes or threads when making jewellery or other accessories. I wanted to use half a dozen of these for a necklace design, so I jumped online to purchase some from a company based in China. The minimum quantity I could order was 1000 units. Which meant that I was left with 994 endcaps. Sitting in a cardboard box on the floor of my jewellery studio for many months. I didn’t know what to do with them, but I didn’t really have a good reason to throw them away either.

Eventually an idea come to my mind… why not create an entirely new jewellery collection, using these endcaps as a starting point?

Opal Ring

Coober Pedy opal set in resin.

Better Worn than Burnt

For all the discussion about renewables vs coal-fired power plants in the news cycle in Australia, the extraction of fossil fuels for energy and chemical production continues unabated around the world. As crude oil becomes more costly and difficult to obtain, industry is chasing other kinds of fossil such as oil shale and oil sandstone.

These fuels all develop under the earth’s crust from the decaying bodies of plants and animals, over millions of years. Crude oil has a high level of petroleum making it valuable for the production of plastics and other highly technological products through processes such as hydrocracking and chemical synthesis. Oil shale has less petroleum, oil sandstone less again, making it less suitable for extracting synthetic polymer precursors, so we burn it.

It is impossible to list all the things these rocks and oil are used for, though they include many types of plastics, carbon fibres, glues, tanning agents, bitumen, cements, bricks and insulation materials, as well as soil additives, fertilisers and pharmaceutical products.

Let it just be said it surrounds us in forms we barely recognise. We are immersed in a paradigm that we hardly understand, let alone have the capacity to escape.

Better worn than burnt.

Magnetic Ring

YouTube

Skye's Glass Ring

Skye bought this rings from a market stall in London in 2010. Out one night, a little tipsy, she hit her hand on a steel bench top and chipped the ring. Skye expresses real concerns about our 'use and chuck' society. She carries with her at all times reusable cutlery, a cup and straw so that she never has to resort to one-use plastics. She worries about problems of ocean pollution where fish are dying from ingesting micro-particle petrochemical plastics.

My responded to the object owner’s concerns, and while I often uses plastics in my work I wanted to repair the ring without them. This extended to not using glues, many of which come from the same fossil fuel sources as plastics. In the 20th century, in the period prior to the development of petrochemical adhesives, there were many pairings of materials in repair craft that may now seem strange or incongruous – the use of metal staples to repair broken ceramics is a notable example. Inspired by this, I repaired the ring by designing a tension set silver sleeve to bridge the broken ends of glass and protect it from further damage. The sleeve is fashioned in the style of fish scales, referencing Skye’s concern for the inhabitants of the ocean.

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Object Therapy is a research and design project created to help us rethink our consumption patterns and reevaluate the broken objects that surround us. Developed in collaboration with Dr. Guy Keulemans of the University of New South Wales (UNSW) and Niklavs Rubenis of the Australian National University (ANU); the project is an investigation into the culture of ‘transformative’ repair as practiced by local, interstate and international artists and designers.

Often repaired objects are perceived as being of less value. Object Therapy seeks to challenge this preconception, celebrating repair as a creative process that can add value.

The exhibition features 30 broken or damaged objects (including one human!) that have undergone therapy – treated and ‘creatively’ repaired by a designer or artist.

The broken objects were collected via a call for entries that was open to anyone who had a broken or damaged piece that needed fixing. Participants dropped their objects off at Hotel Hotel and were video interviewed by a design researcher to better understand their relationship with the object and their perceptions of waste and repair. They were then asked to ‘let go’ of the item so that it could undergo ‘therapy’. Objects were then handed over to a designer or artist to repair. The design brief was loose – the appearance and also possibly the function of the object may have been totally transformed as a part of the repair process.

Designers and artists had six weeks to repair the object. At the point of being reunited with the object the owners were video interviewed again.

The Object Therapy exhibition includes the objects along with excerpts of the video interviews to form a practical study of repair and its possibilities – building a new body of knowledge around repair and the design process, and objects and their meaning.